Rescue FEMA from political ruin to keep us safe
Thank you for your insightful Aug. 28 editorial, “Gutting FEMA will spell disaster for Florida.”
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. In the thoughtful news coverage recently, I think we are missing something important: Politics haunts FEMA.
FEMA was working very well in the early 2000s — but in my view, it was then systematically wrecked by the Bush Administration, which appointed two unqualified political hacks (Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown) who quickly killed many wise policies and programs. Thus, when Katrina hit New Orleans, FEMA was hobbled, with only one observer stationed in the city. I believe that weakness is why the agency failed in New Orleans in the early days.
Today the Trump administration is conducting the worst political destruction ever at FEMA. Excellent workers are being driven away, good programs are being killed and essential institutions are being thoughtlessly toppled at grave risk.
Over FEMA’s history, it has always been whipsawed into political ruin, then rebuilt, then ruined again by politics.
That wasteful political seesaw has shocking cost, in damage and death. And it is excruciatingly dangerous today, in this era of climate change.
It is long past time to rescue FEMA from that political nonsense, extract it out of the Department of Homeland Security and secure it as a professional independent agency.
Meanwhile, we all owe gratitude to present and past FEMA workers, and emergency workers at all levels, who continue to work heroically, day and night, to try to keep us safe.
Ann Patton Orlando
FWC management needs an overhaul
I would like to thank Ragan Whitlock for his guest column concerning Florida’s Wildlife Commission and its handling of the scheduled bear hunt this year (“Wildlife commission must value science, listen to Floridians,” Aug. 31). The fact that Commissioner Gary Lester and others have no wildlife background speaks volumes on this state’s inability to have qualified people make important decisions, especially when it pertains to wildlife management. Their unwillingness to have check-in stations for hunters to bring in bears tells me they do not understand how to manage a hunt. These stations allow wildlife personnel to obtain vital information on the health of bears in order to better manage future hunts in specific areas. These individuals should be replaced by those who have the knowledge, skills and experience in wildlife management.
Thomas Sipprell Orlando
CDC circus is setting us back decades
I guess with back to school and Taylor Swift and all that is happening, it’s hard to focus on the circus at the CDC.
This agency was once the leader in the world for peer-reviewed, careful, science-based advice about vaccines. But not just that. The CDC was the world leader in identifying emerging diseases: where they came from and who was at risk and how to contain them. Most every reputable hospital and doctor’s office followed CDC guidelines on sterilization and best practices for treating life-threatening disease. Every other country on the planet looked to this pre-eminent institution as the guiding light for best medical practice. And because of it, life expectancy has surged over the past 50 years – much of the gain due to painstaking work vetting vaccines and medications, thus halting any number of plagues that previously snuffed out lives far too early.
Now we have a nonscientist as the head of health services in this country. Robert Kennedy Jr., in my view, has led a life that is reckless and has taken unreasonable risks with himself. But he has been given license to be reckless with our entire health-care system and is recklessly ruining an institution that found the answers, had the insights, carefully kept the statistics to see what worked and ran the clinical trials that stopped the diseases.
A nonscientist fond of conspiracy theories and not conversant with rigorous scientific method is setting back medical science in this country — and the world — decades.
Shows you what arrogance can do. Hopefully we, the people, will complain about this.
Patricia Wilson Sanford
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